Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Choosing a title for a book is like choosing a name for a baby! Yes / No?? #mgtab

Okay, I know I’m
taking things a bit too far when I compare a book title with a baby’s name –
I’ll confess, it was an attention grabber.

But… trust me;
us authors really have to give our book titles a lot of thought.

Remember, we
don’t have nine months to change our minds and come up with multi choices. Buy
“Name Your Baby” books… scour the internet for just the right one…end up giving
in to husband’s demand, LOL.

But we do have
to take into consideration what the book is about. What will honestly relate
the plot to a potential reader, and… most importantly, that it hasn’t been used
by a number of other authors within the last few years.

Now my dilemma
is this. I want to put together a three book collection of my own work and have
it focus on my books where the main protagonists are feisty women who won’t
back down from any man.

Two of the books
feature law enforcement officers and the other one is about a Chilean girl who
had to make a life in a new country and surmount a lot of obstacles to do so.

Coming up with
this idea was easy. Trying to decide on an appropriate title – not so much!

Three-thirty in
the morning, I jolted awake with a brilliant solution – “Red-hot Mamas”!
I could see the cover in my head: brilliant red, fiery gold for the words, a
special font that stood out and, of course, highlighting an eye-catching
female.

Happy as a lark,
I went to an author’s book launch later in the day and met up with some of my
colleagues. Excited about my new project, I told them my brilliant idea. Much
to my disappointment, they weren’t as enthused about my title – said mamas
would date the book – that it was old-fashioned.

After thinking
about what they said, (took me all of 20 seconds), I realized they were right.
They next thought that came to mind was that these kick-ass girls needed to
have a better introduction. Of course, that led me to brainstorm with the
others and these were the favorites.

Red-hot Gals

Red-hot Ladies

Red-hot Divas

Then I got
another brilliant notion. Since these were kick-ass girls why couldn’t I
just name the book using that as my title? Kick-ass Girls! When I
gleefully mentioned it, they all rained on my parade. Said that Amazon probably
wouldn’t go for it.

So… as soon as I
got home, I looked to see if the word “ass” appeared anywhere on Amazon’s site.
And it did! Not only in various places but also in a porno
book that had a cover of a…. you got it! A lady’s… ahh derriere.

But… still not
100% sure I’d be allowed, needing to stroke the big guy so he wouldn’t take
away my publishing rights ;-), I wrote to Amazon. Sadly, they sent me back a
lot of mumbo jumbo, with this one sentence standing out:

Please
ensure that your book’s title accurately matches the content of your book.

What we deem
offensive is probably about what you would expect. (This sure helps, doesn’t
it? :-))

So what I need
to know is this: If I go ahead, which of the three titles works the best.

I’m inclined to
go with Kick-ass Ladies because of the contrast in the words, but the others
liked Kick-ass Gals or Divas.

Help me make up
my mind…let me know what you think.

Also, do you
feel that word might be offensive in any way to the readers?

Keep in mind,
wanting to be realistic to the suspense genre and the way detectives actually
would talk, I do use real language inside the book. Therefore, anyone
who dislikes swear words, probably doesn’t want to read those books
anyway.... just sayin'!

One of the books
I intend to add into this collection is my very first Romantic Suspense called Roll
the Dice which is book #2 in the Vegas Series. The first short introductory
book is a permanently free book called Partners and can be found here.
(Seeside panel!) All six book in the Vegas Collection, plus the collection itself, is #FREE
in Kindle Unlimited.